Showing all items tagged "technology"

I took an even bigger gulp of the Apple Kool-Aid last week and bought an iPhone 3GS. Even after all the hype and hoopla - not to mention my high expectations - I haven't been disappointed. In fact, if the first week and a half is any indication, it's a life-changing move.  

First, I think my Better Half wants to grab it from my hands and beat me with it, for all the time I spend with my nose buried in the display.  We'll be driving down the street and I've got Google Maps open, following our course with the GPS.  If we're watching TV, I'm on the internet, looking up the the name of some actor.  If she feels like a Sushi Night, I'm on Urbanspoon, looking up the menu of a local sushi place.   Or we'll lay in bed while she reads and I check how much the mattress is sinking in the middle.

Next, I'm checking Facebook constantly.  Not just checking it, mind you, but updating my status, posting pics, commenting on friend's statuses.  I practically live-blogged my last day at Summerfest this year, beating Facebook like it was Twitter.  I may actually need to get a Twitter account, just to satiate my update appetite.  Granted, I can't seem to update this site more than once a month, but it's a lot easier to pull 140 characters out of your ass than 1447 characters.

Finally, because it allows me to access those things - primarily internet things - at any time, and any place, I actually spend less time on the computer.  That's probably a good thing, because I've been nursing a low-grade internet addiction for a few years now. Granted, that won't change, but at least I can feed the beast from outside now. I may even get some color this year.

If I do, it'll likely happen because I'm riding my bike more. Speaking of which, I got this great GPS app for monitoring my rides...

I'm a bit of a freak when it comes to computers - even some of me geeky friends regard me as an aberration because I have four workstations and two laptops in my house at any given time.  They all serve a purpose, but I won't get into that now, because the point of this post is this: computers use electricity.  The ten thousand dollar question is: how much do they use?

To answer this, I ordered a Kill-A-Watt from Amazon.com.  It's a nifty little device that allows you to easily measure how much electricity any given device uses.  Simply plug the meter into the wall and your device into the meter.  It almost instantly tell you how many watts-per-hour (Watt-Hours, or wH) the item draws.  After that, it's a matter of simple math to figure out what your electricity bill will be.  In my neck of the woods, we pay 10 cents per kilowatt-hour (KwH), so divide your wH by 1000 (to get KwH) and multiply by .10 (the rate charged) to get your cost for using the device.

The Computer
I measured our computer in the den for starters.  It's a Compaq Presario with a 3GHz Intel Celeron chip inside.  Under normal usage, it draws about 101 watts per hour on average (not counting the monitor, printer, or anything else - just the computer).  We probably use it about 3 hours a day - the rest of the day, it goes to standby mode, during which it draws about 2 watts per hour.  Over the course of one day, that means it draws about 345 watts.  Multiply that by 30 (days, in your average month), and I come up with 10,350 watt-hours.  Divide by 1000 to get 10.35 kilowatt-hours.  Now multiply that by 10 cents (0.10), and I find that it costs me $1.04 per month to run that computer (again, not counting the monitor, scanner, printer, or other peripherals).

Now, for those of you paying attention to that last bit, you noticed that the computer was using 2 watts in standby mode.  What happened when I turned it off?  It still drew 1 watt.  That concept of drawing power when turned off came up again and again when I measured more devices.  More on that later.

Monitors
Now, how about the computer monitor?  Well, on the aforementioned Compaq, we have a 19" Philips CRT monitor - you know, the old-school, big, tube-type that takes a lot of space on the desktop.  Under normal usage, it drew anywhere from 66 to 85 watts, depending on what was on screen.  The more white, the greater the power draw, so if you spend more time in Word, or on most web pages, there's going to be a lot of white, hence, more power draw.  In the standby state, I found the CRT was drawing 6 watts.  Taking into account the usage and formulas described above, we arrive at a monthly cost of $1.06 - slightly more than the computer itself.

Contrast that with what I found on my 19" Samsung LCD (alas, it's no longer available unless you want the widescreen) that I use on my main workstation.  It consumed only 25 watts during usage - regardless of what was onscreen.  And under both standby mode and in the off state, it consumed 0 to less than half a watt.  In the same usage scenario as above, that means it costs less than a quarter a month to run.  Tres slick.

The Plot Thickens
Then, I found the pig of the household - the homebuilt Athlon XP 2500 machine that constitutes my main workstation.  There's nothing really outstanding about it - it has the aforemention Athlon chip, 1GB of ram, a measly 64MB GeForce MX440 graphics card, a 90GB and a 20GB hard disk, and a CDROM drive.  This thing pulled 110 watts at idle, and up to nearly 130 watts at full bore.  Standby mode still pulled 62 watts, but it wasn't even configured for that, so it was pulling nearly 110 watts all day long.  A little math showed that it was costing me roughly $7.50 a month.  The bulk of that is due to leaving it on 24/7 and not configuring it to go to sleep.

Miscellany
The other interesting and somewhat annoying discoveries were from the television end of things.  We still have a late-80's era 25" Zenith tube TV that drew a respectable 60 watts during normal usage (contrast to the 19" Philips' 75 watt draw), but drew 10 watts when turned off.  That's just abominable.  Our newly acquired 32" Vizio LCD widescreen pulls about 80 watts during use, but nothing when turned off.  That means we could watch the Viz for 3 hours a day, every day, for a whole year, and it would cost the same as just leaving the Zenith plugged in - without ever turning it on.

The other annoying thing was the DirecTV HD satellite box.  It drew 20 watts all the time - turned on or off.  That equates to about $1.55 a month.  Not that you can do anything about it - unplug it, and you have to go through a 10 minute download every time you plug it back in - or just plain get rid of it.  But from what I've heard, cable TV boxes aren't any better.

So What Is The Moral Of The Story?
Well, I can't exactly tell you that investing in better stuff will save you hundreds of dollars.  I won't make back the $25 cost of the Kill-A-Watt in a month - but I'll likely save close to a hundred dollars over the next year.  You can likely shave a bit off your electric bill by following a couple simple guidelines:

• LCD monitors trump CRTs.  They can draw as little as one-third of the electricity for comparably sized screen.  Added bonus:  you'll get a lot of your deskspace back.
• Either turn your computer off when you're not using it, or make sure it's set up to either sleep or hibernate when not in use.  Newer computers (3 years old or less) have better power management skills.  Older ones - probably not so much.
• Buying a new computer or have a slightly older one that you're wondering if you should hang on to?  Pay attention to what's powering it - specifically, the CPU.  AMD's Athlons and Intel's older Pentium 4's are pigs.  The Intel Core Duo and Core 2 Duo chips are nice and fast, and draw a lot less power.  Apple's new Mac Minis, iMacs, and MacBooks all use them, and they use very little power.

I've carped now and then about the relative merits and downfalls of various computer operating systems - primarily Windows, Linux, and Mac.  Last week, Apple introduced the latest version of their operating system - Mac OS X 10.5, aka Leopard.   I don't know why Apple insists on naming their systems after large felines - previously, we were treated to Tiger, Panther, Jaguar, Puma, and Cheetah.  They've also got Lynx and Cougar trademarked, so presumably we can look forward to an operating system named after older sluts who chase young men.

Earlier this year, Microsoft introduced their latest operating system - Vista.  That marked their first major public offering since XP almost 7 years ago. Leopard is the first new Mac OS in roughly two years.  The thing that struck me about these two releases is the difference in price.  The Mac OS - unless you're purchasing it for a server - is $130, period.  On the Windows end of things, it gets a little blurry. They offer 5 different versions of Vista - six, if you happen to live in a third world toilet.  But for the sake of discussion, let's say we live in the U.S. of A., so there are only 5 versions. 

If you're really cheap - there's the el-cheapo Vista Home Basic edition, retailing at $199.  With this, though, be warned that you're getting a severely hobbled version of Windows with many limitations.  If you're migrating from XP, it's not really an upgrade.

The next step up is Vista Home Premium, retailing at $239.  This is the first edition that may actually represent an upgrade - from the standard edition of XP, but not from XP Media Center Edition.  There are still some limitations on this one, notably in the area of network connections and hardware support.

The next two are aimed at businesses, one retailing at $299, and the other only available through a bulk licensing agreement, so they don't really apply to the general user.

The final version, Vista Ultimate Edition, retails at a whopping $399.  This is the only version that truly represents an upgrade from the previous consumer level Windows OS, and more or less competes with other modern OS offerings.

Certainly $399 for the top Windows OS versus $130 for the top Mac OS is pretty lopsided.  Why does Microsoft believe it can command such a higher price?  Inflation?  Well, let's look at this historically.  The last major consumer Windows OS was XP, released in 2001, at a retail price of $199.  Mac's offering at the time was OS X 10.1 - retail price, still $130.  The really major Windows release prior to that was Windows 95, released in 1995.  Retail price?  $209.  Mac's offering at that time?  OS 7.5, retailing at...$130.  Back then, there was even a major operating system by IBM known as OS/2.  That also retailed for $130. 

So going back a dozen years, Microsoft has always priced their OS at 50% more than the competition.  Now, though, they're a positively ludicrous 200% higher.  Are we really to believe it's worth three times more than the Mac OS? And worth twice as much as the Windows of a dozen years ago?  Hell, you can get a mighty fine Linux OS for free.  Ubuntu linux is a very nice, comfortable OS, and I'd probably be using it a lot more if I weren't thrilled silly over my MacBook Pro with OS X 10.4.  They say you get what you pay for, but I'd counter that money can't buy happiness.